In a first, Indigenous designers from Canada showcase their creations at Milan Fashion Week

Milan Fashion Week, one of the world's most important fashion events, is a time when fashion designers and brands display their latest collections, and movie and music stars, fashionistas and influencers appear in the northern Italian city to gain visibility.

Now, for the first time ever, part of the scene includes a group of Indigenous designers from Canada — showcasing everything from Cree syllabics on a faux fur coat and futuristic beaded visors to diaphanous evening wear cascading in feather flowers.

The Indigenous show, part of the WHITE/Milan Fashion Week section for up-and-coming designers, makes a playful, profound and imaginative debut in la Citta' della Moda, the City of Fashion.

"There's a lot of special qualities, a lot of magic that goes into our clothing," said Robyn McLeod, a member of the Deh Gáh Got'ı̨ę First Nation in the Dehcho Region of the Northwest Territories whose work is inspired by Indigenous Futurisms.

"When I'm creating things, it feels exciting, weaving in traditional art and ways of being with technology, contemporary objects and textiles to make something unique. It's like my excitement is felt by the people who wear my clothing."

An elder taught McLeod to sew at the age of six, but she only dedicated herself to designing clothing full time five years ago, lacking the money and mentors to begin sooner.

Highlights of her collection are a glam rock embroidered caribou hide and white fur coat and black and a white striped dress encircled with ribbons and fur — a modern mash-up of the Métis ribbon skirt.

Talent and hard work alone won't get you to Milan, though, and much of the reason why McLeod and the five other designers are here is thanks to the tireless promotional hustle of Sage Paul, an urban Denesuliné tskwe, a member of English River First Nation and an award-winning designer in her own right.

As executive and artistic director of the non-profit Indigenous Fashion Arts (IFA), Paul organizes a fashion show every two years. IFA works hard, she said, to support the bedrock of designers' businesses — the person-to-person sales in local communities — while also creating ways to accelerate and expand their reach in the global fashion sector.

Paul said many indigenous designers face not only economic and social challenges at home — it's hard to be creative if there's not clean water in your community — but also geographic ones: living far from urban fashion centres, with unreliable internet connections and steep costs for shipping materials and for travel.

Interest in the sustainable methods of Indigenous designers in the monstrously polluting fast-fashion industry is rising, but overcoming misconceptions remains a hurdle, she said.

"There is the idea of the prairie Indian, with the straight hair, feathers, headdress, that kind of thing," Paul said.

"So we're really trying to push through that and share what is happening in our culture today. There's a lot of tradition, but there are so many different influences and experiences with hundreds of Indigenous nations. It's very vibrant."

The Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Embassy in Italy helped to bring the group to Milan and send WHITE/Milan organizers to Indigenous Fashion Week in Toronto last May. There they saw first-hand the breadth of what the designers had to offer and assessed if they had the chops to show in WHITE/Milan.